


epithalamium

by jontinf



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode: s9e06 The Woman Who Lived, F/M, Historical References, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Missing Scene, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-28 17:41:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5099774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jontinf/pseuds/jontinf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He takes her somewhere new but not quite magical. She doesn't mind. Post-episode scene.</p>
            </blockquote>





	epithalamium

The Doctor takes her request for “magical” literally, and they find themselves dining with Harry Houdini and his wife Bess at the turn of the 20th century. The Houdinis are staying in a village in Provence during a tour of Europe. Having no tact whatsoever, the Doctor had tapped the husband’s shoulder, held up a black and white photo that he’d torn out of a library book, mimicked his crazy eyes, and bluntly asked, _“Is this you?”_

Over lunch, he and Clara are told about a new trick he’s working on that has to do with Houdini's submerging himself in a tin can of milk. The Doctor hopes to discover the truth behind the famous handcuff trick at the Hippodrome. He thinks himself an amateur magician; or rather, _Clara_ calls him that, and he’s put it on the CV he keeps around for vanity’s sake, right between the lines for Candy Scientist and Linguist, miscellaneous languages.

Bess passes Clara a bowl of olives. They share a look across the table, one that belongs to close acquaintances, while their other halves go on about methods of concealment, and then all of a sudden, artisanal cheesemaking. It’s been said that it was Bess who helped Houdini escape in London, stepping on stage in front of thousands to offer him a kiss, and with it, a key.

 

 

 

They go for a stroll after bidding their goodbyes, eventually wandering away from the wooden houses and cobblestone streets of the village and cutting a path through the lavender fields. It must be the end of autumn, Clara realizes, twilight already dying the sky pink and gold.

They walk in silence. She's fairly buzzed from the wine, and the Doctor’s doing that thing. Brooding in a Scottish accent. Something spooked him in his last trip. He goes to hold her hand, and she doesn’t tease him like she usually does, lets him have what he needs.

He doesn’t let go until they see a farmstead, creeping vines, beautiful and abandoned for reasons of war or financial hardship.

She follows him into a barn where they find what's been left behind, tools and equipment, even a set of toys and children's frocks. Reminders that there was once a life here.

The Doctor crouches down to carefully study the wheel of a plough, strokes it with a mournful curiosity as though he might have known its owners, understands the toll of leaving home with only what you can carry.

Clara can’t help stare, the last of daylight breaking through the cracks in the wooden barn, making him look even more otherworldly.

“I have a present,” she says with a slight smile and looking at her fidgeting hands, “a good one this time.”

It's possible she'll regret that line when she's sober.

“What have I done now?”

She hears resignation, not of a kind that indicates he feels wrongly accused but that he’s lost track of all the reasons he owes an apology. And she’s become a person who picks and chooses on what she’ll hold him accountable for, sometimes even sharing his sins.

She walks toward him as he stands and lets her back him into a ladder.

Before seeing him after work, she made a point of having a quick look at herself in a window, salvage her hair from a day of shepherding the limbs and minds of tomorrow. Pre-date ritual. Not that she expected him to notice either way.

Then he greeted her twice when she walked into the console room.

 _Oh, hello,_ he breathed. _Hi_. His guitar hanging from his shoulders, its unhappy melody replaced by the sound of his excitement. It made her consider going to tae kwan do more often.

Clara wants him to be pleasanter with people, but she also relishes in keeping all of his warmth and gentleness to herself. A secret they’d share. The knowledge that his capacity for affection runs deep, and its rightful place is with her.

He’s been wearing the Ray Bans all afternoon, probably to hide himself. She eases them from his face and tucks them into his collar. He watches her passively as her finger traces a line down his throat. She feels him swallow hard before pressing her lips to the nape of his neck, tongue and teeth and salt, having fixated on the spot since they landed hours ago.

 _I missed you too,_ she means to say.

He touches her face. _You're all I have_.

 

 

 

Clara doses to the sight of dust particles lingering in the air like snowfall, the sound of insects chirping outside, her head on his shoulder and both of them having slipped their clothes back on. More or less. The scent of lavender still clings to them.

They’re lying on the floor of the barn, on top of his old thick coat. He drags a poppy plucked from a village garden across her chest, idly whispering, “ _Coquelicot,_ _éffleurer,_ _coeur.”_

“Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?” There's a smile in her voice, how it cracks on the last word, having gone hoarse. A recent development.

He sighs in disapproval. “Your commitment to making everything about hanky panky is astonishing. Even for a human.”

“Thank you.” She sounds like the favourite dirty old aunt everyone has. A life goal, truth be told. In her defence, she spends much of her time around thirteen-year-old boys. The humour’s bound to imprint. “And stop calling it ‘hanky panky.’ You’re not a schoolmarm from the 1930s.”

 _“Says the schoolmarm_.”

“Says the schoolmarm’s—” she stops. There is no name for what he is to her, what they are, how it empties and burns and overtakes like a siege.

He absentmindedly brushes his thumb at her temple, and she laughs.

“What?”

“You’re stroking my hair.”

“So?”

“Have you met yourself?”

She’s had it. Time for him to fess up. Whatever is causing the existential crisis this time.

“Let me guess," she says. "You’ve recently become certain of our untimely deaths.”

“ _Clara_.”

“I meet mine in a volcano. Always thought that might be a brilliant way to go. You, of course, something embarrassing like a fungal infection on a very rude part of your body.”

“It’s not funny.”

“It will be if you start braiding my hair.”

He glares, stops touching her, and shifts over to his side so that his back is turned to her.

She rolls her eyes. He gets like this. More so recently. Scares himself over the risk that comes with his life and then sulks about it for a certain extent of time. And _she knows_ , she knows he’s lost others, she knows what that’s like. The sentiment is appreciated, but her patience is wearing thin, being treated like crosshairs are on her person at all times. He should speak for himself.

He underestimates the danger of life on the ground. People die every day, and it has nothing to do with him. She rather that her death mean something anyway. Not a disease, children left to fend for themselves, supermarket flowers wilting on the side of a road. Better a martyr than an accident. Better with him than alone.

She leans over, fingers curling over his shoulder, and murmurs into his ear, “Do I need to calm you down like my year sevens?”

Before he can reply, he finds himself pinned onto his back, her moving on top of him, and pressing her forehead to his. With his face in her hands, she starts mock ‘shush-ing’ him, like an actual bloody infant. He makes a face, the bizarre indignity of it, his arms trapped between their bodies, fails to turn away despite his best efforts.

“If this is how you calm your year sevens,” he says, “somebody needs to call the police.”

She smushes her cheek into his with a laugh, finding everything about this _so_ _hilarious_ , and then starts badly singing, “ _Oooh chiiild, things are going to get easier_ …” She might have seen someone do this in a film is how she justifies it. The wine might also be a factor.

He whinges and protests, the sound of her name muffled.

This face hates all upbeat and inspirational music, ever. The Proclaimers, despite their national origin, have earned a place on the banned list. Not that she or the TARDIS pay any heed.

Clara hugs him tighter, sings louder and more badly, her stopping and going after a few words to giggle. She manages to tire him out and coax out a smile. It would sweeten the victory if the song gets stuck in his head. He’s very impressionable like that.

Still laughing, she releases him and finds that he’s settled into a fond gaze, seeming to have attained a level of peace, like he fully believes that she can singlehandedly snuff out every monster in the universe. He also might have just lost oxygen from the suffocation and gone loopy.

“There,” she says, forehead still pressed to his. “Not even you are immune to the soul classics of the 1970s.”

“You’re a bit oddball. Did you know that?”

“Even for your standards?”

“Clara Oswald, I am the most normal person I know.”

They feel each other breathe and draw comfort from the other’s proximity. While she knows that she can go a length of time without craving the rush that comes with the adventures, those eyes he has for her, young and old, they belong to dreams and shadows. Being so adored could make anyone reckless.

“Something is going to happen, is it.” This isn’t a question, her prepared for anything he might reveal, ever the pragmatist. She doesn't wonder why she isn’t more afraid, this lapse of basic human instinct. “Not that I expect you to give an honest answer.”

“Nothing is going to happen,” he says. “I won’t let it.”

She smiles dotingly, smooths his hair, and teases, “That’s reasonable.”

He thumbs her chin and pulls her down for a long kiss. But there is also an urgency to it, like a last request, makes her think of Bess’s kiss, the one that released her husband, the grand finale to his most famous act.

She breaks away and fists his shirt in her hands, pushes it upward, moving her mouth to hover over his bare stomach. He dresses like someone her father would not approve of, not like Danny and his pressed shirts, his soldier’s attention to neatness.  Not anymore. They once had that in common.

That, and her.

The precipice of seduction, and she’s having a think about her dad and her tragically deceased boyfriend. _That_ is a bit oddball. _Eyes on the prize, Oswald_.

The Doctor’s breath hitches, the pace of it quickening, eyelids heavy, as if he hadn’t just been engaging in a bit of _hanky panky_ a short moment ago, his lips crushed against the inside of her thigh, the tickle of his curls across her skin.

She looks forward to repaying the favour, aspires to hear him keen again.

He’s got those eyes again, soft stares and fingers combing through her hair with a delicate reverence, like he’s set his mind to tend to her. She wets her lips, her immediate attention set lower, to the trousers left unbuttoned from earlier, finding his scent mingled with her own.

He’s made himself consummately familiar, a promise he won’t keep, but she let him make anyway.

“Hey,” she whispers, looking to him, slipping a hand into his, and bracing the other at the bend of his hip. “Likewise.”


End file.
